Ruth with Toddler Betty and Infant Charles
Ruth and Charlie homesteaded a fifteen acre island in the Fox River fifty miles south of Chicago. Ruth was sixteen and Charlie was nineteen when they married in 1931. This young couple, like many other young couples during the Depression years, lived a hardscrabble life, a life that included home birthing. The year was 1934 when the events described in this blog happened.
Ruth would attest to the fact that nursing does not prevent pregnancy, since she conceived the couple’s second child while nursing, a year and a half after the birth of her first child, Betty. And so, it was that on a hot summer day, she called from the cabin door, “Charlie, I think it’s time! You better get Doc Perkins!”
Charlie had been adjusting the tractor carburetor with a small wrench when Ruth called. He slipped the wrench in his pocket and hurried to her. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Ruth answered.
Charlie grabbed the car keys hanging from a nail beside the door, kissed Ruth, and hurried to undo the boat. While poling across the river, he spotted one of his buddies, Johnny Kamaski, wading along the shoreline fishing. Johnny was about Ruth’s age.
“Hey, Johnny,” Charlie called. “Ruth’s gone into labor. I’m getting Doc Perkins. Would you go over and stay with her?”
“What?” Johnny asked.
“Go stay with Ruth. She’s going to have a baby,” Charlie repeated.
“Oh, okay. Okay, I guess I can,” Johnny replied nervously.
Between labor pains, Ruth prepared for the birth. Though the day was hot, very hot, she started a fire in the wood stove and heated water, she covered the bed with layers of newspapers and placed clean towels made from a discarded flannel bed sheet at the foot of the bed and two pillows at the head. While she did this, baby Betty watched from her crib, and Johnny Kamaski watched while standing in the open door.
Ruth was at the kitchen table when her water broke. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I guess I’m having this baby now!”
She waddled to the bed, lifted herself onto the newspapers, and braced herself against the cabin wall as she recalled Doc Perkin’s words, “Bare down. Bare down.”
She bore down, and her second child was born.
“Johnny,” she said. “You have to cut the umbilical cord.”
“What?” Johnny questioned in disbelief.
“Take the scissors off the table and cut that,” she said while pointing to the cord connecting her to the baby.
Johnny’s face turned a pale green as he gingerly lifted the fleshy cord and snipped it.
“Now tie it,” Ruth directed. “Tie both ends.”
Johnny’s hands trembled, but he did as he was directed.
Not long after the birth, Doc Perkins arrived with Charlie.
“Well,” he said. “Looks like you managed just fine. Very resourceful. Very resourceful.”
When Ruth told the doctor that Johnny had cut and tied the umbilical cord, Doc Perkins said, “Oh that wasn’t necessary. It could have waited. The fluid in the cord turns to jell once exposed to air.”And so it was that Charles Leroy was born on July 28, 1934, and from that day forward, Johnny Kamaski was known by many as Doc Johnny.
As the Crow Flies 